


The Lazarus Charm

by realsorceror



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Complete, Friendship, Humor, Murder Mystery, No Smut, Not Canon Compliant, Sarcasm, romance is stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-09 10:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12886020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realsorceror/pseuds/realsorceror
Summary: When you can't trust the government, you have to turn to other people to get things done.(or, H. Granger tracks down a dead man to solve a murder)





	1. p.

**Author's Note:**

> a non-canon (but not excessively so) (hopefully decent) murder mystery that nobody asked for  
> sort of agatha christie, sort of pulp fiction  
> new chapters every few days

* * *

**INVITATION**

Dear Members:

We are pleased to invite you to share with us the latest magical discovery of DR. EDWARD WALLINGFORD:

“ **THE LAZARUS CHARM”**

A NEW SPELL of his own INVENTION

September 10th at 7:30 PM

LLEWYN SOCIETY OF CHARMS MEETING ROOM

London, England

Light refreshments to follow presentation.

* * *

 

 

“Dr. Wallingford’s newest discovery,” said the first witch. Her hat, decorated with a stuffed vulture, wavered spookily over the conversation. Her aging companion sighed over her champagne.

“It’s sure to be amazing. After his invention of the Sectumsempra Hex, just after the war, we all knew he was going to be something special..”

“Well,” a third witch said, “They _said_ that hex was a dark spell, invented by a Death Eater - a dark wizard –“

“- he was cleared of all suspicion,” said the second witch. She sipped from her glass. “Years ago. Almost immediately.”

“Besides,” said a fourth member of the group, “There was barely _any_ proof. Just some theoretics on blood purity, and he wrote that paper decades ago.”

“Who hasn’t entertained the idea, anyway?”

The witch in the vulture hat scowled and abruptly left. The remainder of the group subsided into silence.

\--

 “And now,” a beautiful witch on the stage announced, “The great Dr. Edward Wallingford’s presentation.”

Applause, somewhat muted near the back, filled the auditorium. The audience was dazzled by the stage lighting and impatient from the wait. The witch subsided into the shadowy background and the great man himself appeared. He stood, sweating, and launched into a speech.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Greater London Charms Association…”

A weary settling ensued in the seating.

“..men and women of the Ministry of Magic..”

Fans started rustling in the crowd. A few more competent individuals whispered cooling charms.

“..I would like to extend my gratitude to the Board for allowing me this opportunity..”

The rest of the audience perspired. The vulture hatted witch mumbled, not quietly, _get on with it._

“..this spell is the product of lifelong study of magic, charms, and of arithmancy. It required the careful dissection, examination, and understanding of the charm _Prior Incantato._ ”

The audience sensed a point being arrived at and perked up accordingly.

“..I present a charm that can reverse the effects of the spell most recently cast on an object.”

Renewed interest in the crowd. Whispers drifted from the seats. The esteemed doctor gestured to his pretty assistant.

“Observe,” he announced.

The witch raised her wand.

“Incendio!”

A fire immediately flared to life and burned, harmlessly, in the center of the stage. The audience shifted again, feeling as if it were watching a Muggle magical trick show. Edward Wallingford raised his wand. He opened his mouth. The watching members of the Greater London Charms Association waited expectantly.

He glanced up above himself and frowned.

A bolt of green light exploded from somewhere directly over the stage. The crowd started in shock as the doctor crumbled to the ground. His assistant shrieked.

 

 


	2. 1.

 

* * *

 

September 12th, 2003 Page 1

**DAILY PROPHET**

'AVADA KEDAVRA'

**The Killing Curse**

_..illegal dark spell employed to murder famous CHARMS MASTER , DOCTOR EDWARD WALLINGFORD, in front of dozens of witnesses.._

_RONALD WEASLEY of Ministry of Magic Auror Offices named lead investigator.._

_...the doctor is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, and assistant..._

 

* * *

 

 

...I set the paper down as a woman entered my office.

“Granger and Weasley?”

Her voice sounded nervous. She was older than me, by ten years or so and dark haired. She was beautiful, even though she was dressed for a funeral. I gestured toward the chair in front of my barren desk.

“It’s just Granger now,” I said. “Can I help you?”

“ _Hermione_ Granger?” Her eyes narrowed slightly. I felt like she wasn’t completely impressed by what she saw.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Of the Golden Trio?”

“Private investigator.”

“Oh,” the woman said, and sat down. “I need your help, Miss Granger. My husband’s been murdered.”

“Have you tried the police?”

“I don’t trust the Aurors,” she said. I couldn’t completely blame her. The Ministry hadn’t quite recovered its reputation from before the war years. She wasn’t the only person who came through my door looking for a better option.

I shrugged vaguely.

“They’ve investigated, of course,” she continued. “But I’d like a second opinion. Someone on my side.”

“It’s ten galleons a week, plus expenses,” I said quickly. Being friends with The Boy Who Lived brought people in the door of my office, but it didn’t pay that well on its own. Business was tough without my partner, besides. She didn’t seem phased by the amount.

She looked downright unimpressed, actually.

“My name is Elizabeth Wallingford,” she said, like it explained everything. “My husband is..”

“..Dr. Edward Wallingford, murdered with a killing curse?”

“Yes.” She scowled at Page One of the Daily Prophet, still on the desk in front of me. “He was preparing to announce the invention of a new charm. He said it was going to change the fabric of the Wizarding World.”

“Something to – “ I glanced at the paper “- reverse a spell after casting?”

It sounded pretty life-changing to me.

“You can imagine the utility,” she said. I nodded. My mind had immediately jumped to all kinds of possibilities – the Vanishing of a friend's arm bones while I was in school, a boy puking slugs into a bucket, a recently married man and his wife lying dead on a castle floor –

I decided to stop imagining.

“Does the spell work?”

“Nobody knows. Nobody had seen it but him. He never wrote the incantation down, or told anyone about his work – it was supposed to be cast for the first time at his lecture last night, but..”

She made a helpless sort of grimace. I waited patiently.

“..he never revealed his secrets before he was ready to show them off. There's nothing to show for them now. He left his money to his assistant, and all his research, and nothing for me. Where’s the justice in that? I spent years with him, in hiding in Australia all through the war, and now this girl ten years younger than him has everything. He barely knew her.”

“Oh,” I said, somewhat blankly. Mrs. Wallingford looked to me like she was more upset over the loss of the Galleons than anything else; she was now looking distinctly watery. I mentally cursed myself for not asking for more money. “Were they lovers?”

“Hardly,” she sniffed, “But he was besotted nevertheless. You’ll see.”

\-----------

The Wallingford homestead was a vast mansion in the country. I found myself apparating into the middle of a criminal investigation. Aurors milled through the garden, taking samples of hedgerows and gravel. A bright red head bobbed enthusiastically about in their midst.

I quickly slipped in through a side door.

Sometimes, being the Bright Witch of the Golden Trio is a pain in the arse. Sometimes, it’s useful to be able to smile at a member of the opposite sex and say _‘Hermione Granger, private investigator,'_ and be ushered through to see the person in charge. The hapless member of the kitchen staff I’d put the works on hung around in the background, looking hopeful. The Person In Charge scowled at him and then smiled awkwardly at me.

“Ron,” I said, stiffly. “How’s life as the big boss?”

He shrugged.

An equally ginger woman had been sitting with him. He had abruptly stopped paying attention to her. Her expression suggested that this was not the norm in her life. Ron was, typically, oblivious.

“Hey, ‘Mione,” he said. “Or, I mean, _Miss Granger._ What brings you here?”

“A job,” I said, feeling irritated and trying to stifle it. Ron Weasley grinned disarmingly. Kitchen Boy suddenly decided to cut his losses and banged out of the room.

“Still doing the detective gig? Thought you would’ve quit, after my sister left..”

“..not so,” I interrupted. “Can I do interviews of the staff, or is this an official crime scene?”

“No, no.” He failed to notice my frosty tone and waved an arm at the red-headed woman. “Go ahead. Start with, uh, Miss Apple, here – the victim’s assistant – let me know how you get on..”

 

Miss Lauren Apple had clever green eyes, a better complexion than I did, and a reasonably sensible manner. She eyed Ron’s departing back and said, “ _You’re_ Hermione Granger? I read that you and Auror Weasley used to, uh, date.”

“.. _in school_ ,” I stated flatly. She didn’t quite smirk.

“I’m here on behalf of the victim’s widow. She’s interested in.. getting his murder solved.”

“We all are,” said Apple. “He was a good person.”

The almost smirk turned to an expression of vague worry. I thought that nobody seemed to be all that sad that Dr. Wallingford was dead. His closest loves ones, if that was what they were, seemed more _apprehensive_ than anything else.

“He left you all his money,” I noted. Lauren Apple looked slightly embarrassed.

“I don’t know why,” she said. “Maybe he didn’t have anyone else left to care about.”

Later, I asked Ron if she was a suspect. He said she’d been on stage, visible, during the murder, which counted her out.

In the present, I asked to look at Wallingford’s notebooks. I didn’t know what I expected to find; he had, apparently, been secretive about his work, and I doubted Lauren Apple or Ron Weasley had failed to snoop around in his private writings.

“He never wrote the incantations for his spells down,” she said, “But go ahead.”

She was right. There was a vast collection of handwritten notes, all in code. I paged through the more recent handful of notebooks, finding nothing useful. Wallingford had loose, level handwriting that filled up the pages without any paragraph or apparent break in thought. I flipped through a few more books, and paused over one. Something about it nagged at me. The letters, I noticed, weren’t the same as in the others. I compared it with a different book:

 

_Date: April 11, 2003_

_Date: May 1_ _st_ _, 2001_

 

It felt like I’d seen the handwriting before. I flipped some pages and confirmed my suspicion: the writing in the one was definitely more cramped and smaller than the others. I stopped reading and glanced around the library. Miss Apple was on the other side of the room, conversing with one of the magical portraits. I quickly dug my wand out of my pocket.

“ _Geminio.”_

An identical copy of the questionable notebook appeared in my hand; I quickly stashed it away with my wand as the other witch and the subject of the portrait looked over at me.

“Did you say something?”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Just talking to myself. Thinking out loud.”

“Oh?” Lauren raised an eyebrow. She seemed less cheerful and more sinister, suddenly. The portrait’s eyes followed us. He coughed sarcastically through his mustache.

“Yes,” I said. “I find it helps me think, sometimes, don’t you?”

Lauren Apple and the portrait narrowed their eyes suspiciously, as one. The witch seemed to be fiddling with something in her pocket. I started feeling nervous. She took a few steps forward, and then, as my paranoia was reaching panic status, the library door banged open.

Ron Weasley barged into the room. Everyone present – portrait included – jumped slightly.

“Herm – uh, Miss Granger! Miss Apple. Sir, uh, Thing. Good news! There’s been an evolution in the case and it seems there is a chance that foreign assassins may have been responsible…”

The last time I remembered being that pleased by the arrival of Ronald Weasley had been after two months living in a tent. I didn’t breathe an audible sigh of relief. I also didn’t miss an odd look on Lauren Apple’s face.

She seemed, briefly, furious.

 

 


	3. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter: our hero drinks tea and breaks into a house

I was at Harry Potter's house. My ex partner smiled glowingly at me from across the kitchen table.

“A murder,” she said encouragingly, “Definitely a step up from missing persons and that werewolf shitshow, mate, you’re definitely doing all right without me.”

I thought back to the library. All things considered, I wished I still had Ginny sitting at the other desk in my office.

“Missing persons wasn’t so bad,” I said. There had been plenty of lost sheep to track down after the war. It was why he’d gone into business together in the first place: to help people. These days, I felt like all I was doing was scrabbling around to pay rent.

“I’m sure you’ll keep getting on fine without me,” Ginny continued.

The trappings of marriage suited her. The kitchen of Number 12, Grimmauld Place was cleaner and warmer-looking than it had been in the past. It looked less like a hideout for revolutionaries and more like a family home every time I saw it.

“This notebook you borrowed,” she continued. “The writing isn’t at all familiar to me. I’m not sure what you think it looks like.”

“Hmm,” I said. Maybe it was nothing after all.

“I heard Ron is working on the Ministry's case.”

“Yeah.”

I frowned into my teacup.

“What happened between you two, anyway?”

I couldn’t fault Ginny for asking. He was her brother, and we – Ron and I – had been inseparable, until, suddenly, we weren’t.

“We’re just on a break,” I said.

Probably a permanent one. I had been in love with Ron, for a while, but maybe that had just been the influences of hormones and the war. I wasn’t sure. I had realized after a while that he was infuriating – not suddenly, in one day, but it had built up. Then again, as I grew up, and everyone around me started to get married and have kids, I thought maybe it was me that was the problem and not him. I was the frustrating one, and not Ronald Weasley. He appeared to be the same as always, with or without me. He was happy with the life he had, regardless of what happened around him.

I was never really content with anything.

 

Ginny frowned slightly at my diagnosis of me and her brother’s relationship status.

As usual, Harry Potter saved the day. Sometimes he killed dark wizards, and, sometimes, he swept in at the right moment to interrupt an unwanted conversation. He snagged a biscuit, pronounced something on the fate of the Chudley Cannon’s playoff hopes, kissed his pregnant wife on the top of the head, and plopped down in the chair next to her. His eyes settled on the duplicated notebook, still on the table. He did an immediate double take.

“What’s that?”

“A lead.” I hoped.

“Where did you get it?”

One explanation later, the Boy Who Lived was looking like he had seen yet another ghost.

“I’d recognize that handwriting anywhere. It’s the Half Blood Prince.”

Ginny interrupted immediately.

“The what?”

I stared.

“Severus Snape? Are you sure?”

Harry shrugged. “I spent a year obsessing over his old potions textbook, Hermione-“

Ginny cleared her throat. “You’re saying our old potions master wrote this? The dead one?”

“- _I think I’d know,_ ” Harry finished.

“Well, I’m sure he was alive whenever he wrote the notebook,” I said.

“It’s definitely his writing,” Harry interjected.

“Yes, that explains why it was familiar,” I commented. After all those years of returned homework with the same cramped writing in the margins, I thought, maybe, I should have been able to figure it out on my own. _Poor effort. Flawed theory. Unacceptable._ The feeling of inadequacy was all too familiar.

Ginny turned the notebook’s pages.

“One time,” she said, “Snape returned a two foot long essay to me with failing marks because I’d misspelled a word.”

Harry still looked slightly shocked.

“What’s this for, anyway?”

“Supposedly it’s research for a magic-reversing spell,” I said. “But it’s supposed to be research done by a totally different dead man. My client’s husband.”

“So it’s stolen?”

Ginny turned through the last few pages. Harry made a _bad-luck_ face.

“It’s in code, anyway. Maybe it’s for the best that nobody knows what the spell is. It’s kind of a scary idea, you know? Being able to undo a spell after it’s already cast.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’d be useful to undo the killing curse on the body. Could just ask the _victim_ who the murderer is.”

“Yeah.” Harry looked uncomfortable about the idea. I decided not to press it further.

Ginny abruptly shoved the notebook at me, finger tapping at the header of the first page. The date was written exactly one inch into the left margin:

_May 1_ _st_ _, 2001_

I stared at it. A cold sensation settled somewhere in my stomach. Harry glanced between us, looking confused and apprehensive.

“What’s going on?”

“Ginny can explain,” I said. “I have to go – thanks for the help – I’ll Owl you –“

I fixed the image of my office in my head and turned once on the spot.

\--------------------------

Some wizards disdained the idea of using Muggle technologies. Such things as automobiles, cellular phones, and the phone book were taboo to them. I had found that, once in a while, keeping ties with my non-magical past came in handy. That was why I had a phone book in my office. Usually looking up a wizard in the listings was pointless, but, I figured, if _I_ was supposed to be dead and was in hiding, I wouldn’t want to go too far. I wouldn’t want to go hide out in Australia. I would have just disappeared among the masses.

I was pretty sure Severus Snape was only pretending to be dead.

On page 120, I found a name and address. _Spinner’s End, Cokeworth._ I quickly visited the flat above the office for a change of clothes, and was on my way to the location just after dark.

\--------------------------

After an hour on the night bus, another waiting for a canceled train, and ten further minutes on the Knight Bus (now serving complimentary and horrific lattes), I stumbled onto the right street.

Maybe just before midnight wasn’t a great time to visit a dead man. In retrospect, I could have waited for morning. I stood in the road and stared at the scene of urban decay for a moment, beating down sudden nervousness.

Then I wandered off along the street, passing weedy gardens and broken streetlamps. The home in question had a lot of old mail stuffed into the box and a stray cat living in the barren garden. I stared back at its gleaming eyes, challengingly, passed through the gate and along the cracking concrete walkway, and stopped on the doorstep.

I knocked.

A dog in a different house barked at the noise. The door creaked open.

Nobody had opened it; it had been slightly ajar. I groped in my pocket for my wand and stared at the dark interior. My fingers touched the familiar surface of the handle. I glanced behind myself at the deserted street and stepped inside.

The carpet was dusty, but not very badly so. The wall paper was peeling somewhat. A flickering street light outside barely penetrated the interior gloom. The entry hall gave me a claustrophobic feeling, like entering a windowless cellar.

Five feet in, something swooped overhead in the dark. The front door slammed shut behind me. I found myself yanking my wand out and stepped forward, automatically. A voice in the blackness whispered _Severus Snape?_ I was tongue-tied, panicking slightly, and distracted by the feeling that I had somehow been here or done something like this before – déjà vu, but more solid-feeling – and then light exploded out of a door at the far end of the hall and I tripped over something and fell. A black shape wavered in my half-blinded vision. It raised a hand and a bolt of red light erupted out of it while I was still trying to disentangle myself.

 

When I came to, I was still on the dirty carpet. Someone towered over me, a book in one hand. I blinked hard, attempting to clear my vision. The figure blurred in and out of focus and then sharpened suddenly.

Hooked nose, pale skin, enraged sneer. I felt some validation that I had been right about the continued existence of Severus Snape, but it was dampened somewhat by my pounding headache. Also, by the knowledge that I had wandered innocently into what was clearly a well-laid trap.

He said something to me. I shook my head dazedly and sat up. My ears were ringing; some forgotten, sensible part of my brain identified the bolt of light that had hit me as a Stunning Spell. The snarling form of Severus Snape blurred back out of focus.

“What?” I said.

“Where did you get this book?” His voice sounded exasperated. And very angry. I shook my head.

“I’m gonna puke,” I announced. My stomach was twisting around. I blamed the Knight Bus’s complimentary latte, to some extent. Also, it was possible that I had a concussion.

“ _Where did you get this book?_ ”

My stomach did a flip. A wastebasket appeared in front of me, suddenly, slammed across the room by magical force. I wavered over it for a moment and pulled myself together.

“Got it from a dead man,” I croaked. “Edward Wallingford.”

Snape’s face reflected his increasing displeasure. I picked myself up off the hall floor and felt, along with the nausea and headache, like a twelve year old in potion’s class.

“Well, from his study.”

I had time, while he considered this information, to notice that he looked old; no better or worse than before but grayer under the grease and unkemptness. A sitting room was in the background. Stacked bookshelves seemed to dominate it.

“I need to find out who killed him – I’m, uh, this sounds dumb, but I’m a private detective these days, and –“

This stammering was ridiculous. I was twenty-two years old, a war hero, and there was no reason for me to still be scared of a potions teacher.

“-My investigation led me here, to find you,” I said, forcing some conviction into my tone.

 

Snape’s sneer had dwindled; he appeared to be thinking about something. Or did he look worried? Because of me? He’d been in hiding for years, apparently, pretending to be dead. It seemed like my client’s husband had somehow gotten hold of his research notes for a groundbreaking new spell. I wondered how. Snape was probably trying to figure out the exact same thing.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” I tried, sort of testing the water. My nausea had faded noticeably. I folded my arms and pretended I was feeling tougher than I actually was.

“Sorry to disappoint,” said Snape. “What do you want, Miss Granger?”

“I wanted to see if you weren’t.”

But now I was thinking that if anyone had a good reason to kill Dr. Edward Wallingford, maybe it was Severus Snape.

“Good job,” he said, sneer returning. “You figured it out. Now get out of here.”

It would have been smart to leave, but for some reason I didn’t. He caught the stubborn frown on my face and looked overwhelmingly exasperated.

“ _Go.”_

“No,” I said. My voice didn’t even shake that much. “I have some questions for you.”

“So?”

“So I can tell the entire Wizarding World you’re out here. They’ll believe me. I’m _Hermione Granger._ ”

Silence. I decided to press my luck.

“Did you kill Edward Wallingford?”

He rolled his eyes. I had half expected him to curse me into a pile of jelly and hide the remains in his moldering back garden. So, the fact that he hadn’t was – new. More tolerant, or less dangerous.

“You used to be smarter than this,” he said, and held up both his hands. “You would have noticed, earlier, that I no longer possess a wand, making it difficult for me to cast a killing curse on – whoever this person is. “

“But..”

I frowned.

If the spells he had used to trap me and knock me out had been wandless magic, I wasn’t so sure that he even needed a physical tool to murder someone.

“A levitation spell and a tripwire,” Snape said drily. “And a floating garbage bag.”

And a hell of a Stunning Spell, I thought, wincing at the continued headache. I attempted to rally, despite my doubts and his withering glare.

“I guess it’s kind of hard for a dead man to go and buy a new wand.”

“A brilliant deduction.”

“Anyone could have stolen anything you had left in the dungeons after your, uh, demise.”

“Genius.”

“Except,” I continued, “The date in that notebook is from _after_ you died. So how did he get it? Wouldn’t you have kept it here?”

The sarcastic smirk faded somewhat. I barely noticed. I was thinking out loud, through the pounding headache and slightly blurry vision I was still suffering.

“So, either they changed the date on the notebook and it was written _before_ you died and then stolen, or it was written _after_ you died and _given_ to him.”

Snape looked less like he was about to accuse me of being a moron and more like I was catching up to him. I was feeling brave; I pushed the envelope.

“There's no reason for someone to change the dates, so, why would Severus Snape give a showboat like Edward Wallingford the key to the greatest new spell of the century?”

 

 


	4. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter: ron weasley makes an arrest

“You tell me,” Snape said. “You seem to be on a roll.”

I was fairly sure that if I got it wrong I would lose the little bit of - rapport? – that I had started building. I needed Snape. He was the key to the murder I had been hired to solve. He stared at me and folded his arms, tapped his fingers a couple times against his elbow. I made a wild guess.

“He offered you something in exchange?”

“Wrong again.”

I felt the door start to slam on my metaphorical foot.

“You gave it to him for free? Why?”

That seemed a little altruistic, on the face of it. Then again, I knew stuff about Snape that other people didn’t. Harry had spilled the beans on his actions during the war. Most people knew that he’d been a double agent. Almost nobody had any exact details about his motivations.

He made no sign to suggest that he was planning to answer my question. I found myself getting a bit frustrated; it was late, my head ached, and all things considered, I was starting to regret taking this job. I should have stuck with hunting down wedding rings stolen by pixies. My annoyance was probably why I decided to push my luck further instead of backing down.

“Well, since you’ve been so generous, maybe you’d be interested in finding out why he’s dead? Reverse the killing curse, ask him what happened?”

“How would I do that, with no wand?”

My head pounded. I summoned up my last reserve of patience.

“You can teach the spell to me. Or borrow mine. Or -what do you want? Money? A Ministry pardon?”

“I want my own wand,” he said, looking faintly triumphant. “Given that I’m _dead_ , I can’t exactly stroll into Diagon Alley and buy one. Give me one, and I’ll help you.”

“It’ll look a bit strange for me to suddenly decide I need _two_ wands,” I said.

“I’m sure you’ll find a way. You’re supposed to be clever.”

My expression must not have looked particularly confident, because he shrugged his shoulders and took a step back into the lighted room behind him.

“That’s my price. _Or_ , you can always figure out the answer to your murder mystery on your own, Miss Marple.”

I was pretty sure that I couldn’t, and it was pretty apparent that he knew that I didn’t think I could. I tried not to seem desperate when I nodded my acceptance of the deal.

There was no way I had fooled him.

\-----------------

Still, though, I woke up the next morning feeling like I was going to make some kind of breakthrough. The headache was gone and I had time, over breakfast, to read the paper and think over the revelation that Snape was, well, _alive._ It seemed, when I thought about it, like maybe the possibility could have crossed my mind before. The fact was, after the battle was over, there hadn’t been much time to think about the fate of Severus Snape at all. Harry had given some testimony that he was innocent – for what that was worth. The Ministry had seen fit to not charge him with murder, given that he had apparently already been killed. That was about as far as society was willing to go to vindicate Severus Snape. Then he had sort of dwindled into the past, more or less forgotten.

If I was honest, it had never crossed my mind to go and actually make sure his body was still in the Shrieking Shack where we had left it.

I drank tea, picked at a bagel, and caught a relevant headline in the _Prophet_ out of the corner of my eye.

 

DR. EDWARD WALLINGFORD'S FUNERAL TO BE HELD 2:00 PM, SEPTEMBER 13

_reception to follow_

 

_Shit._

I did the only thing that seemed feasible and wrote a note to Ron Weasley.

The owl that took it away wasn’t gone for long. It returned to the office half an hour later, looking ruffled, and took off again in a rush as soon as I untied my response from its leg. The note said, in a rapid scrawl, _WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU NEED TO POSTPONE THE FUNERAL MEET ME AT PUB FOR LUNCH YOU WILL HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS ONE RON WEAS_.

I was not really gratified to find that his punctuation hadn’t improved with his detective skills.

I spent the time until lunch in Ollivander’s shop. The ancient wizard stared me down suspiciously; I mumbled a half-baked explanation of having broken my old wand, and left with something made of hawthorn and dragon heartstring. It felt fine in my hand, but I had my doubts that it would work for Snape.

Stranger things had happened.

Strangest of all was that, when I entered Tom’s pub, Ron Weasley was already there.

 

“'Mione,” he said, sounding uncharacteristically annoyed, “What's this about?”

I sat down. I ordered a pint. He had a quill out and parchment and was, as far as I could tell, taking diligent notes. I gave him a rundown on my last day of work, not including Snape but incorporating a suggestion that I had found out how to cast the reversal spell. He seemed impressed. I was inwardly pleased.

Not that impressing Ron Weasley was all that hard.

“You want me to postpone a funeral so you can cast this, uh, reversal spell, and..ask the dead body some questions?”

“Yes.”

“You can really do it? How?”

“Of course I can,” I said, trying to look as confident as I had sitting in charms class almost a decade ago. “It's not difficult once you understand it, really, Ronald. All I need is some time. And, also, access to the Ministry morgue.”

“Well, I'll have to be around to let you in,” he said. “Official business, you know.”

I imagined myself trying to convince Severus Snape to cast a spell in front of the Ministry and failed.

“Come on,” I said. “You can't just leave it open for me? As a favor.”

“I do a lot of favors for you.”

“Okay, a trade. I do the spell, find the answers, tomorrow morning I tip you some suspects..unless you have those on your own?”

I could tell from the way he immediately flushed that he didn't. I tried not to feel guilty about needling him. He fidgeted, considered, stared at his drink, and then sighed.

“Alright, fine. I guess I can..leave a door or two unlocked..”

Success was somewhat sweeter when it didn't involve manipulating one's friends, but I would take what I could get. Besides, I told myself when I paid for both drinks, I really _was_ planning to help him out. Sometime later.

After I had already figured things out on my own.

It was not as if I hadn't done things like this before.

\-----------------

The Ministry of Magic kept their morgue off in an underground hallway. It was about as welcoming as Dracula's castle. With the help of a disillusionment spell and a badge reading SEVERUS SNAPE, TOURIST, we entered the dark room and found the necessary corpse.

Edward Wallingford looked almost exactly like the mustached portrait I had seen in the mansion library, but without a doublet. Without any clothes at all, actually. Snape studied the body without expression. I avoided thinking about any other corpses I had seen in similar shape, passed the wand I had bought along to him, and waited expectantly.

He rolled his eyes at me and raised the wand.

The lights came on suddenly.

Our reactions were instinctual: Snape spun around to face the entrance and took a step back, and I jumped a few inches and stumbled over my own feet. Someone said  _that's him!_

“Ah, Mr. Weasley,” he said.

Ron looked paler than usual in the light from the oil lamps. Lauren Apple was behind him. She was the one who had spoken first, and she seemed pleased by the way things were going.

I was feeling a little annoyed.

Snape looked the way I felt.

“Snape,” Ron said, looking indignant. “ _You're_ under arrest. And Hermione, you're, uh, you should just – leave.”

“She was trying to help him,” Lauren interjected. I scowled.

“I'm sure it was just a mistake. She wouldn't help a murderer. Right?”

I raised both eyebrows, summoned a deeply-buried reserve of patience, and cleared my throat.

“ _What?_ ”

“It's apparent,” Ron said, “That Snape killed Dr. Wallingford because he stole his research. Isn't it?”

“Not..not really,” I replied, but frowned. It had crossed my mind, of course, but, given that Snape was helping me, I had decided it was unlikely. When I thought about it, that was the only real reason I'd had for tossing the theory out. It was the same sort of logic that I had used when I was a kid in school, to persuade myself that teachers were infallible.

“Did you have any other ideas, then?”

I didn't, but I scowled at him and pointed toward the body. And Snape, who stood like a stone and didn't say anything at all. Lauren Apple's expression got darker. Ron was turning red.

“Snape can reverse the killing curse on the body and then we'll just ask the victim.”

Lauren spoke up finally.

“He can do that? It will work?”

“Yes,” said Snape, tone irritable. It was Lauren's turn to look nervous. It made me vaguely suspicious, but I didn't have much time to worry about it.

“How about we just wait and find out before you arrest anyone?” I caught Ron's eye. He fidgeted, glanced from me to Apple and back, and then apparently made a snap decision.

“Alright.”

“Alright,” I said, relieved. “Okay. Here we go.”

Snape looked around the group, gathered next to the body on the morgue table, sighed, and raised the wand I had given him. He mumbled the words of the spell. We all craned our necks to see a jet of green light shoot out of the corpse and back into the wand. The body jerked sharply and sat up. Snape dropped the twisted, smoking remains of the wand with a distasteful sneer. He shook his right hand, twice, like he'd been shocked.

Ron leaned forward into the resurrected man's field of view, eyes wide and face back to its normal pale hue.

“Edward Wallingford? Can you answer a question?”

The doctor shuddered. I felt the urge to back away; my face was twisting into an expression that resembled Snape's more than it did Ron's. Lauren Apple hovered nervously in the background.

“What?”

“Can you tell us who killed you?”

Wallingford looked up at the ceiling, shaking. His shoulders shifted. He took a deep breath and shouted wordlessly.

Then he took a few shallow ones, rolled off the table, and lay still.

“Fainted,” said Snape, eyeing the unconscious body at his feet. “No surprise.”

“You just resurrected a dead man,” I said, feeling only slightly less overwhelmed than the passed-out man on the floor.

“It's a miracle,” Ron agreed, sounding awkward. Footsteps echoed from somewhere outside the room, getting closer. He bit his lip nervously, glanced at me, and then raised his wand toward Snape. “Still have to arrest you, though. You're the only suspect I have right now.”

I opened my mouth to argue, immediately incensed, caught a very slight head shake from Snape, and subsided again.

“Reasonable enough,” he agreed, arms folded. The sneer on his face had vanished; he appeared unconcerned. Ron seemed slightly surprised. I scowled at the guards bursting into the room, the naked man passed out on the stone floor, and at Lauren Apple's stunned face.

 

The guards took both Snape and Wallingford away – one to holding cells, one to St. Mungo's. Lauren Apple vanished. I found myself standing in the cold morgue with Ron Weasley, glaring at the smoking remains of the brand new, eight-galleon wand.

“You alright?”

I shrugged and tried to look like I might be, eventually.

“This isn't going the way I wanted,” I said.

“Things don't always,” said Ron. “Lauren Apple is the one who told me that Snape is still around. I dunno how he survived that snake attack, but I guess a guy who has figured out how to resurrect the dead is smart enough to make it.”

“All he did was reverse the spell,” I corrected. “It isn't exactly the same thing as bringing the dead to life. Why did you arrest him? Why would he come back and restore a dead body if he was the one who killed it in the first place?”

“It's just procedure,” Ron said. “I know you don't have to worry about rules, but I do. It's not like he's going to Azkaban, just holding. He's been in worse, probably. He'll be out whenever Wallingford talks, I guess.”

He looked unsure under the flickering light from the magical lights.

“You _guess?_ ”

“Well, he is still sort of wanted for murder. Among other things. War crimes.”

“He was cleared before.”

“Don't be naive, Hermione.” Ron was getting more uncomfortable; he lowered his voice, casting a wary glance toward the nearby open door. “The Ministry were willing to overlook a dead man's crimes, but now that he's back, they're going to want to be more thorough. I'm sure he'll be declared innocent, but, I mean, he must have known this might happen when he decided to come out here and do this job.”

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, but I knew he wasn't.

\-----------------

Snape neither confirmed or denied when I went to see him the next day. He sat in his cell and only, after a few minutes of trying, said _Unless you have a suspect to replace me, I suggest you don't come back here._

I didn't bother going to St. Mungo's; I was pretty sure that being famous wasn't going to get me into the ward. I lurked around the office, instead.

I must have dozed off at my desk. An owl rammed into the closed window and the resulting crash jerked me awake . I stumbled over, jerked the glass open, and accepted a blast of cold rain and wet feathers. The disgruntled animal refused to leave again after I retrieved the letter it was carrying. After a few fruitless attempts to get it to leave, I closed the window with the owl still dripping water on the office rug and settled in to open the sodden envelope.

_Ron again._

 

_HERMIONE,_ the note began. I suddenly thought back to Ron's broken magical quill in school and smiled despite myself. 

_Sorry again about last night I have enclosed some copies of a few notes you may find useful regards ronald wsly._

_ps. L.A. aso arrested_

His letters were, at least, short and to the point, if poorly spelled. The enclosed documents were marked with official Ministry evidence stamps and had suffered somewhat from the rain outside. I glanced up at the wet owl, who was peacefully settling in on Ginny's old desk chair, and opened the first note.

 

 


	5. 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in this chapter: hermione solves a crime

I skimmed the pages. They were both letters. The first began with  _My Darling,_ and continued on in that vein. 

_Every minute we are apart is torture,_ it continued, and kept on; I didn't look too closely at the next two pages, and stopped finally at the last few lines. 

_Do you ever think about just quitting,_ they read.  _We can just stop doing all of this. Drop everything and leave everyone else behind. Yours forever, E.A.W._

The next one was shorter, to the point, and it appeared the writer had not been a fan of the idea of dropping the couple's entire life and moving out of the country. _You know perfectly well neither of us would be happy with that, don't be an idiot. There are better ways of solving our problems. - L.A._

“Huh,” I said to the owl. It stared at me disinterestedly.

L.A. was pretty obviously Lauren Apple. E.A.W was, possibly, Edward Wallingford. I didn't have much experience with extramarital affairs, but this looked like one to me. Something about it was nagging me, but I wasn't sure what; I put the letters in my pocket and disapparated.

\-------------

“So,” I said to Severus Snape, “It looks like not only were you set up, but you were set up by the guy you brought back from the dead. Does that make sense to you?”

“No,” he replied, flatly. He leaned back against the wall of his cell and studied me with the same expression as the owl I had left in my office.

“Me either. So E.A.W must be someone else, but I'm not really sure who. Similar initials, different person.”

No response. I didn't really need one.

“Maybe he had a long-lost twin brother,” I said. Snape sighed.

“Why are you here, Miss Granger?”

“Oh,” I said, distracted immediately, “I thought maybe you would be interested in the case, since, you know, you're a suspect.”

“Not even slightly.”

“Well, if I find out who this person in the letter is, they'll release you,” I tried. Or lied. I knew better.

“Unlikely.”

So did he.

“At least, I could try to convince them.”

“Doubt it.”

“Okay then,” I finally said, abruptly losing patience, “If you won't help me, I'll figure it out on my own.”

\--------------

It crossed my mind, an hour or two later, that he was probably brushing me off on purpose. It might look shaky if I had help proving a suspect's innocence from the suspect himself. Which led me back to considering Lauren Apple's arrest, and then the letters that Ron had mailed me.

Love letters, from, apparently, Apple to Wallingford. But my client had told me that they weren't in a relationship, and it hadn't seemed to me like Apple was really upset about her boss's death. I studied the letters again, frowning.

I hadn't spent a long time looking at Wallingford's handwriting. I hadn't had time to do much more than notice that Snape's notebook was, in fact, not written by him. I would still swear that the second of the letters wasn't quite the same. Something about the spacing of the lines, maybe.

Something crashed in through the open window. I jumped again. A barn owl sat on the rug, dripping. The other owl awoke from its nap and stared at it.

It delivered a packed envelope, sat on the empty desk next to its companion, and settled in. A small puddle started to form on the floor.

_E. Wallingford is awake,_ said the note.  _Come fast if you want to talk to – R._

It dawned on me suddenly. I still had the three-day-old copy of the _Prophet_ on my desk; a quick glance at the news of Wallingford's expiration only made my idea feel more right. There wasn't any time to waste.

\--------------

I appeared at St. Mungo's. A guard pointed the way to a ward that looked exactly as it had when I was in school. The room containing the restored Dr. Edward Wallingford was crowded: a trio of Aurors, with Ron Weasley smiling at me in their midst, his wife, a couple doctors, and the great man himself.

The doctor still looked confused and pallid. Ron stirred himself when I came in the room. He stuck his hands in his pockets, smiled around awkwardly, and addressed the patient.

“Hello, Doctor,” he said pleasantly. I leaned back against the closed door and sighed inwardly.

“I'm Auror Weasley. I have a few questions for you about your, uh, death.”

Wallingford stared around the room, apparently uncomprehending. His eyes settled on his wife. A sudden spark of life entered the glazed blue orbs; he pointed, cut Ron off in the middle of a sentence about _cause of death_ and announced _“She did it.”_

The group at large reacted accordingly.

Ron looked confused. The other Aurors swiveled their heads to stare at the unfortunate woman. Mrs. Wallingford choked slightly and replied, somehow not sounding _too_ desperate, “Why would I do something like that? He's just confused, Mr. Weasley. He was dead for a few days. You know the Healers _did_ say that there might be some memory loss.”

I cleared my throat. Now was my moment of glory. Or of quitting in embarrassment and moving, perhaps to Alaska, perhaps to the moon, never to show my face in the Wizarding World again.

“I think I know why,” I interjected. Weasley, Aurors, and both Wallingfords turned to stare at me. Nobody said anything.

“So,” I continued, made uncomfortable by the number of eyes fixed on me, “I took a look at some letters provided by Ron – uh, by Auror Weasley, who I've been..working with..on this case.”

Ron tried not to look like a hopeful dog and mostly failed.

“The Auror thought they were proof of a romantic relationship between Edward Wallingford and Lauren Apple, who is obviously currently under arrest for this crime. I don't think that they were written between _Lauren_ and _Edward._ I think they were between Lauren and _Elizabeth_ – my client. The handwriting doesn't match Edward's. I think she conspired to kill her husband with the other suspect because they were in love and the good doctor was in the way. “

I paused to take a breath. The room was silent; I took the lack of interruption as encouragement.

“So,” I said, “The two of them plan out this murder, knowing that _supposedly_ only Dr. Wallingford knows the spell that might incriminate either of them. Then they go about their business. Lauren Apple leads Auror Weasley on a wild goose chase, looking for assassins. Elizabeth Wallingford hires me to confuse things further, because who hires a private investigator to solve a crime that they're guilty of committing? It almost worked out, and then Auror Weasley found these papers.”

“And,” I added, “I found Severus Snape.”

Ron stared from Doctor to Mrs. Wallingford and back, then nodded.

“They have the same initials,” he said. “That makes sense. I got those letters after we notified Mrs. Wallingford that her husband was back from the dead. Found them lying out on a table in their house, like someone had accidentally uncovered them.”

“Not the same.” Dr. Wallingford interrupted; his voice sounded hoarse. He stared at his wife, blue eyes feverish. “My middle initial is _M,_ for Michael. Hers is..”

“ _A,”_ I said.

“Alice.”

He nodded, jerkily, like his head wasn't exactly responding to his nervous system correctly yet. I wondered exactly how much damage being dead for fifty-odd hours could do to a human body. The Healers probably had their work cut out for them. So did Ronald. _I,_ on the other hand..

...seemed to be out of a client and a paycheck along with her.

Elizabeth Wallingford didn't for a moment look like she was planning to deny that she'd done anything wrong. She looked from her husband, to me, then to the Aurors, shrugged, and sighed.

“I guess it almost worked,” she said. “Lauren was supposed to get the money – he left it to her, because she's a brilliant witch and he thought she would carry on his life's work – and then I was going to get the life I wanted. With her.”

Dr. Wallingford looked totally crushed. It made it hard to even consider feeling pleased with myself for another successful case solved, paycheck or not. His wife glanced at him and rolled her eyes. It seemed to me that there was no particular need for her to announce that she had never really loved him.

When the Aurors led her out of the room, Edward was blinking hard. Just as I had decided it was safe to leave, he stopped me.

“Hold on, Miss, uh...”

“Granger,” I said.

“Thanks for helping me,” he said. “Even though you didn't have to.”

I felt vaguely uncomfortable; it hadn't really crossed my mind to ever do anything else.

“You're welcome?”

I wanted to edge out of the room, but he clearly had more to say. He moved a shaky, inaccurate hand up to his eyes and rubbed at them.

“My eyes are dried up,” he explained. “Comes from being dead, I'm told. Listen, I know my wife hired you, and I know you probably need to get paid, so, if there's anything I can do..”

I took a deep breath and interrupted him again, wincing inwardly. This one was going to hurt.

“..actually,” I said, “I know of someone else who could probably use a leg up, if you're throwing favors at people.”

\-----------

“..so,” I was saying, still unable to shake off the feeling of overwhelming weirdness, “Elizabeth Wallingford is in jail with her one true love, which is nice for them, Ronald Weasley gets a solid _case closed_ on his record, and you're out of jail, so, I guess, everyone's happy, right?”

I sat at a table in the least visible corner of The Leaky Cauldron. Severus Snape sat across from me, glowering darkly. At least, I assumed that was his expression; it was slightly too dark to tell for sure. I waited a beat to see if he was going to add anything. Then a moment longer. He finally sighed and stirred himself.

“You traded in your favor to Wallingford for my release?”

“Yes,” I said.

Well, temporary – he was, actually, supposed to be under sort of house arrest. What had actually happened was that I'd spent the afternoon and part of the evening arguing with the Aurors, with a letter in my hand from Dr. Wallingford, to let Snape go. Eventually their captain had agreed to release him as long as I kept an eye on him. Turned out that being a member of the Golden Trio still carried _some_ weight; they'd decided I was an upstanding citizen who would keep their prisoner from fleeing the country or committing any further crimes.

“It sounds like everyone's happy except you,” said Snape. “You and Wallingford himself. You know, you probably could have asked him to pay you. I can call in my own favors.”

It was my turn to frown.

“I really don't think you would have,” I said.

He said nothing. I decided to change the subject.

“Anyway, I guess we're going to be spending a lot of time together now, and, well, I didn't get paid for my last job for – for obvious reasons, and I'm down a partner due to the fact that mine decided to spend more time with her family, so I was thinking..”

“You can't be serious,” Snape said. I caught a glimpse of his characteristic sneer in the gloom. “I am not playing private eye with _Hermione Granger._ ”

“Private _investigator._ ”

“You could get a job in any Ministry department without even trying. Why are you here, trying to pretend you're Miss Marple?”

“For the record, I liked Nancy Drew better. And I guess I'm _here_ for the same reason you are.”

“Why's that?” He sounded like I was straining his patience. I reminded my inner thirteen-year-old that he was _here_ and not in a cell under the Ministry of Magic because of _us._ I sipped my butterbeer to bolster our courage.

“Because,” I said, “I try to help people, even if they don't think they want it.”

“The curse of the Gryffindor,” he remarked. I ignored him.

“Besides, you owe me,” I said. “Aren't you someone who pays their debts? And, also, what else are you going to do? Your murder trial could take months. A year. Meanwhile, you're stuck with me. Might as well make the best of it.”

“Insufferable,” he mumbled, but without any real heat. I suspected I was winning the battle. I tried not to feel smug. I prepared myself to go in for the kill, and was, in yet another stroke of luck, interrupted. The barman limped over and abruptly slammed an envelope on the table. We both jumped and stared at him.

“Message for Miss Hermione Granger.”

I opened the envelope in silence, glanced over the contents, and fought down a smile.

“It's a job,” I said. “A man who thinks his neighbor has been poisoning his kneazles. Right up your alley.”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“Ten galleons a week, plus expenses,” I said. “Each.”

I took the resulting silence as a sign of interest.

“We could raise the price to fifteen,” I tried. “Since I lost us our last commission.”

“I'll get you another new wand, too. Try not to burn this one up.”

It's true what they say. Money talks. And, as it happened, money was going to solve a lot of our problems – as they came, which they did not long after we had (reluctantly, on Snape's part, and not without a sense of personal achievement on mine) shaken hands on our deal. But, for the moment, I couldn't help but think that things were looking up.

 

_end_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's all for now  
> if you liked this and feel like letting me know, please do  
> or if you didn't, whichever  
> -sorceror


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